Just off the Press

Have you ever been afraid to speak in public? If so, you are not alone. Most people find speaking in public terrifying! But it doesn’t have to scare you any longer. Whether you are: a business or sales person making a presentation a motivational speaker delivering an address a club member giving a report...Read More »

For actors both young and old, the prospect of preparing to perform a Shakespearean role can be intimidating…even terrifying! Translating Shakespeare seeks to make the actor’s preparatory work on the Bard’s plays both stimulating and fun by de-mystifying the experience. It offers step-by-step explanations of the fundamental processes involved in creative preparation: comparing edited texts, analyzing...Read More »

In The Best Ten-Minute Plays 2014 you will find fifty terrific new ten-minute plays, all successfully produced during the 2013-2014 theatrical season. They are written in a variety of styles. Some are realistic; some comic; and some are dramatic. Included in this volume is a comprehensive list of theatres which do ten-minute plays. View on...Read More »

The Best Stage Monologues 2014 (The Best Women’s Stage Monologues and The Best Men’s Stage Monologues) are from the 2013-2014 theatrical season are presented in two essential books! Here, you will find a rich and varied selection of monologues from plays – most are for younger performers (teens through thirties), but there are also some excellent pieces for...Read More »

Monologues for Latino/a Actors, A Resource Guide to Contemporary Latino/a Playwrights for Actors and Teachers. This book is organized a little differently than most published collections of monologues. Each chapter is arranged in several sections: “About the Playwright,” “LIst of Plays,” “Playwright Information,” “Performing the Monologues,” “The Monologues.” View on AmazonRead More »

Hot News

'The Count' reveals a continued drought for female playwrightsStudy results presented in San Diego show slow progress toward By James Hebert | noon July 21, 2015

Catching up on some news from the national conference of the Dramatists Guild of America, which took place in San Diego over the weekend:

The conference served as the forum for the release of "The Count," a research project into the demographics of the playwrights whose work has been produced at regional theaters around the country over the past three seasons.

The Count is the brainchild of the playwrights Marsha Norman and Julia Jordan, both of whom helped present the findings to a full house at the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines. The project is funded by the Lilly Awards (which honor female dramatists) and the Dramatists Guild.

And the key results:

• Just 22 percent of the plays produced during the study period were by female writers. (Jordan said that actually was an improvement over a previous, less comprehensive study that put the figure at 15%.)

• About 62 percent of the works were by white American males.

• Productions by writers of color constituted just 12 percent of the works; white American females of color made up only 3.4 percent.

Norman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of "'night, Mother" as well as the books to such musicals as "The Secret Garden" and "The Color Purple," said in her keynote speech before the full results were released: "We lose the voices of women over and over again."

She added that despite the kind of reasoning often heard for why more women writers aren't produced ("not enough female-written plays" has been among the most prominent), there's actually only one explanation: "Artistic directors and producers choose not to do them."

One writer who has battled her way into getting her plays produced is Lisa Kron, who made a bit of history barely a month ago: She and composer Jeanine Tesori became the first female team to win a Tony Award for best original score (honoring their work on the musical "Fun Home"). Kron also won for best book.

Speaking after the results were released, Kron says the ongoing research has "really galvanized my thinking around this issue," and that when the numbers first became clear to her, "my head exploded."

One oddity of The Count: It also included a breakdown of female-written plays in various cities around the country. (Chicago was tops at 36 percent.) But while both Kansas City and Berkeley were included in that tally, San Diego was not -- even though the conference's host city is home to two of the most prominent regional theaters in the country, La Jolla Playhouse and the Old Globe.

San Diego is actually one of relatively few cities in the country that has multiple League of Resident Theatres companies. (Berkeley and Kansas City each have one.) ... See MoreSee Less

CAMBRIDGE — The time is now, the place is a Fifth Avenue apartment in Manhattan, and the game is “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?,” as Kate and Huntley wait to see what kind of prospective husband their only daughter, Kitty, is bringing home. They’d be OK, they aver, with a black son-in-law. Paul, however, turns out to be an evangelical Christian from Virginia, and that has Kate, at least, wondering whether Kitty doesn’t need saving from her intended and his church.

Marisa Smith’s comedy, which premiered at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater in 2012, was a little fluffy in its original incarnation, but it’s been improved since, and the Nora Theatre Company production at Central Square Theater is so beautifully directed, acted, and presented that you could mistake the play for Noël Coward.

The good news starts with Steven Royal’s extravagant set, which conveys the opulence of an Upper East Side flat: a foyer as well as a sitting room, a creditable Manhattan skyline outside the picture windows, chair-rail molding everywhere, elegant furniture (including a leather ottoman), a sideboard with high-end alcohol, lots of modern art, and an oil portrait, pointedly lit by John R. Malinowski, that looks just like Lydia Barnett-Mulligan, the actress who plays Kitty. Barbara Douglass’s costume palette encompasses both Victoria’s Secret lingerie and a bright blue burqa.

As they wait for Kitty and Paul to arrive, Kate and Huntley sample a 20-year-old Bordeaux (“A hint of pencil lead”) and debate whether Sidney Poitier or Harry Belafonte has the darker complexion. Huntley is the director of public information at the United Nations; Kate played town kleptomaniac Mary Davenport on the TV soap “As the World Turns.” They’re concerned for their daughter: Dartmouth graduate Kitty is the producer of a TV news program, and Kate thinks she should have her own show, “like Diane Sawyer or Katie Couric.”

The first act of “Saving Kitty” — the play runs 2½ hours with one intermission — presents Paul as an infomercial for evangelicals, who, he explains, are not all fundamentalists. Paul has a PhD in education from UCLA, he believes in evolution, and his church has named him principal of a school it’s opening in the Bronx. Still, that doesn’t stop Kate from coming at him like a lion eyeing an early Christian. She swivels between hugely intelligent and weirdly obtuse, but she’s “on stage” every second, and when she calls former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “I’m-a-Dinner-Jacket” or asks what a vegan is, you wonder whether it’s not all part of an act.

It’s a demanding role, in any case, and Massachusetts native Jennifer Coolidge, best known for her appearances in the “American Pie” and “Legally Blonde” film franchises, does full justice to it. Nora artistic director Lee Mikeska Gardner, who helms this production, gives her plenty of room, and Coolidge takes it, displaying superb comic timing when, for example, the burqa comes off and she says, “I’m born again!”

Her three costars hold their own. Alexander Cook offers a professorial, laptop-obsessed Huntley whose mind seems perpetually at the office — where he has a secret. Cook also does a mean pileated-woodpecker call. Barnett-Mulligan’s perky, giddy, eyelash-batting Kitty is totally taken with herself in a totally infectious way. And Lewis D. Wheeler’s Paul is a model of open-mindedness and Southern charm, unfazed by Kate’s most outrageously loaded questions. “Saving Kitty” may preach tolerance in religion, but its real subject is relationships, where tolerance is a saving grace.

A.C.T.'s Young Conservatory to Host Summer Young Conservatory Festival

American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) Young Conservatory Director Craig Slaight is proud to announce the summer Young Conservatory (YC) Festival, featuring the world premiere of Snakes, a collaboration with A.C.T.'s Young Conservatory, A.C.T.'s Education and Community Program and Oakland's Destiny Arts Center, and I'm Still Standing, a celebration of the music of Elton John. Snakes will perform August 11-23 at The Rueff at A.C.T.'s Strand Theater (1127 Market Street, San Francisco) and August 20-23 at Oakland's Destiny Arts Center (970 Grace Ave, Oakland). I'm Still Standing will perform at A.C.T.'s Strand Theater from August 18-30. Tickets for individual productions are $20 and two-show packages are available for $24 (a 40% savings). Both are available now by calling the A.C.T. Box Office at 415.749.2228 or online at www.act-sf.org (select "Conservatory Performances" tab on the main page). Tickets to performances at Oakland's Destiny Arts Center are available online at www.destinyarts.org.

The world premiere of Snakes, a Collaborative Youth Arts Project, brings together a diverse group of young actors from A.C.T.'s Education & Community Programs (Elizabeth Brodersen, Director), the Young Conservatory (Craig Slaight, Director), and Oakland's Destiny Arts Center (Sarah Crowell, Director) in the creation of a play about race, bigotry, and the very meaning of the American dream. In the wake of a cataclysmic earthquake, a newly discovered island that is home to a race of silver-skinned people captures the world's attention. Infused with spirited poetry and movement, Snakes is a thought-provoking new play that asks timely questions about tolerance, justice, and community in a rapidly changing America.

Written by Chris Webb and directed by Tyrone Davis, this provocative play features a talented young cast from across the Bay Area including Joseph Givens, Kevin Rangel, Erica Rogers, Monique Salazar, Makhissa Sano, Danielle Tucker and Naia Young. Additional cast members will be announced at a later date.

I'm Still Standing celebrates Reginald Kenneth Dwight, known throughout the world as the incomparable musical icon Elton John. With more than 40 years as a singer-songwriter, Sir Elton John has given the world an astonishing body of work-from haunting ballads to whimsical musical romps-that has delighted and moved generations of listeners. With a book by Craig Slaight, this unique theatrical production explores the journey of growing up in word and song, including such hits as "Your Song," "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me," "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," "Rocket Man," "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," "Bennie and the Jets," "I'm Still Standing," and more.

Says Slaight: "With the thrilling opening of the new Strand Theater, it seems the perfect opportunity to celebrate the multiple community collaborations that have brought such vitality to young people in the Bay Area. From our own connection within the A.C.T. family between the Young Conservatory and the astonishing Education and Community Programs, to those groups in the area that we have forged rich partnerships, Destiny Arts in Oakland and San Francisco's Bird School of Music, this mini-festival celebrates the amazing fireworks that can happen by collaborating. It is exhilarating."

The YC Festival is made possible by a generous grant from The Bernard Osher Foundation. Additional support provided by The William G. Gilmore Foundation; The Craig Slaight Young Conservatory New Plays Fund, an endowed fund of The Next Generation Campaign; the van Löben Sels/RembeRock Foundation; and donors to A.C.T.'s season gala and YC Homecoming Celebration. ... See MoreSee Less

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